Hockey: Lake Erie pounds Rockford IceHogs

Saturday

Oct 12, 2013 at 9:59 PM

Rockford Register Star

CLEVELAND — What a difference 24 hours made for the Rockford IceHogs. A night after a dominating 5-2 win over the Lake Erie Monsters, the Monsters gave it back to Rockford on Saturday, topping the IceHogs 5-1 at the Quicken Loans Arena.

Lake Erie claimed the game’s first goal when Karl Stollery beat Antti Raanta with a point shot at 3:17.

Lake Erie outshot Rockford 13-0 over the first five minutes. Overall in the frame, Lake Erie outshot Rockford 20-4, a night after Rockford outshot the Monster 19-6 in the first period and led 3-0.

Even after Rockford finally got a couple of opportunities on Sami Aittokallio, the Monsters sustained their momentum and pushed their lead to 2-0. On a power play, Andrew Aggozino cleaned up a pretty pass from Bryan Lerg at 12:12 for his first goal of the season.

In the second period, Rockford’s hole was dug deeper after J.T. Wyman snuck his first goal of the season under Raanta at 3:55, making it 3-0. Another crack on the power play made it 4-0 Monsters later in the stanza. Mark Olver tipped a Matt Hunwick shot past Raanta for his second marker of the season at 14:33.

Rockford made it a 4-1 game in the third period with a power play goal. Alex Broadhurst set up Brad Mills at 3:18 and the center buried his second goal of the season. Mills has points in all four of Rockford’s games in 2013-14 so far.

Looking to reduce the gap to two goals with another power play opportunity, Rockford pulled Raanta at 13:19 of the third period, but Lake Erie won the faceoff and Lerg buried the short-handed empty net tally at 13:25.